


On The Defining Of Self

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [99]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Brothers, Character Study, Gen, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:48:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24805714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: Boba's right on the edge of his future when he collides with his past
Series: Soft Wars [99]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 94
Kudos: 428





	On The Defining Of Self

Coronet City calls itself the jewel of the Core. It comforts itself with how far greater it is than Coruscant in the enumeration of ways from a list it keeps for that purpose. It boasts it’s greenery, it’s industry, it’s society.

It’s a pit of poverty and misery, polished up to a shine on top and hoping no one bothers to look beyond that. Every planet is, Boba suspects, and he’s seen enough of them to make that sort of judgment. They only differ in how much effort anyone puts in to maintaining the illusion. He tightens his hold on the flexiplast overhead strap and sways. Duracrete and transparisteel buildings swirl by outside painted the gray gloom of industry.

The overhead speakers chime a polite two-tone beep, unobtrusive in the same way the recessed lights and muted fabric colored seats are. ‘ _Crescent_ _Corporate Park_ ' someone organic enunciates. ' _The next station is Crescent Corporate Park. Transfer here for-_ '. They list the transfer lines then, presumably, repeat the announcement in another language, then a third and fourth and fifth. Boba only understands the Rhodian, and thinks he might recognize a word or two of the Ugnaught. The rest are a mystery and he has to bite down the urge to flush with embarrassment at the not-knowing.

He doesn’t need to be perfect, doesn’t need to know everything. He doesn’t need to prove himself against anyone but himself.

The tram slides to a halt with another two-tone alert and hardly a shiver. The doors slide open silently to a sparse open-air platform and square holes in pavement boasting token sculpted foliage. It’s a far cry from Boba’s last two transfer lines. Far less graffiti outside, and the tramcars and stations look like they might have actually been built in the past century. He’s getting closer to the capitol, he thinks. The few passengers boarding are more concerned with minding themselves than they are with minding everyone else.

Boba bites his lip. They’re still there. Two transfers with a handful of blocks between each, and maybe he could have been mistaken about the humanoid in coveralls but the Zabrak’s marking’s are distinctive enough that he’s sure. Three total train lines, and the pair are still with him, still following. Still not-watching in that very distinctive way. Boba shifts, and hopes the quiet click from his ruck doesn’t sound like the armor it is.

It’s almost as heavy as the data chip burning importance in his pocket.

The spaceport is still too many stops away, if this line even goes all the way there. Boba couldn’t pause to consult maps if he wanted to keep up the ruse that he was nothing out of place.

The tram doors close with another warning chime. It’s just past mid-morning; boarders have their choice of seats. Does it look strange that he’s standing? It’s been too long, he can’t sit now. That would look even stranger. And he needs to be able to dart out when he thinks he should, the first time there’s some significant population he can get lost in.

He ducks his head, lets his hair fall around his face to maybe make himself harder to confirm. Air circulators breathe cold above him to cut the humidity the stop let in. Corellia rumbles by.

He isn’t scared, he tells himself. He’s been on dozens of jobs, scores. He is _ beroya _1 coded in his veins, Mando beats in his chest. He’d have been even younger than he is now for his first solo hunt, traditionally, but the galaxy at war was a different place than in Buir’s youth and he’d been held in wait.

He is fifteen and is to be an adult when this hunt is through. He doesn’t need his _ buir _2 here to aim his blaster for him.

The Zabrak scans orange eyes casually around the tramcar. The humanoid murmurs into a comm. Boba thinks maybe, maybe the thickset being sitting cross-corner a car up has been there since a stop after he got on. He thinks there’s another one car down.

Coincidences kill, he hears Buir say, and knows he can’t afford to dismiss the feeling.

He thought he’d been careful. He’d covered himself, spoken Rhodian to his contacts, kept his distinctive _ aliik _3 out of sight. He was sure he left no trace in either buildings or systems. They can’t know what he’d done. He wonders what it was that caught suspicion.

The being a car up is a Nikto, and they’re wearing the blue gray of Czerka Corporation Security. Coincidences kill, and the only thieves Czerka Corporation tolerates are the ones on its’ payroll.

‘ _Axial Park South’_ , the overhead chimes. ' _The next station is Axial Park South. Transfer here for all local service._ ' They list the lines. Another human slips up from the trailing tramcar and carefully doesn’t interact with the two already here.

They don’t plan to let Boba reach the spaceport.

The riders all pay diligent attention to anyone but them. Grand Corellia is an illusion, and you don’t maintain illusions by looking too hard at what goes on.

The two-tone sounds, the door slides open. Boba darts out into the station.

There isn’t cover. Crowds even here are thin. Boba had miscalculated somewhere, failed to account for something. A holiday, maybe? Corellia’s government district closes down for far more of those than is reasonable.

Axial Park South serves Coronet City Center, and its station unfolds into appropriate flying towers of shining glass and chrome. The few scurrying people are all the sorts on their second careers and wearing shoes that cost more than Slave I and Boba combined. He’s underaged and underdressed and overexposed. There’s nothing to blend into, and the only benefit is he can just make out his four tails in all the reflective surfaces.

He steps up his pace.

Two flights of stairs down from the platform, across the tunnel entrance liberally strewn with Core-aesthetic art and tasteful posters for theaters. They use long-range readers at this station, lucky. He doesn’t have to stop to get his credit chit out to scan. A tingle of electricity Coronet City insists is too low to feel and it’s deducted his ride and lowered the energy field at the exit.

He’s just under jogging and he doesn’t want to go any faster. Corporation security is bad enough, he doesn’t need to grab Capitol Guard attention too.

He regulates his breathing, keeps his movements fluid.

There’s open area all around Axial. The park is half the city, green space littered with monuments celebrating the victory of Capitalist Industry over Imperial Expansionism in some war or other that no one even remembers. Open spaces, plenty of security cameras. They’d wait until he hit Center proper, wouldn’t they? They won’t want to attract Guard attention either. Probably. Unless they have some in. They might. Czerka’s older than the Republic; they have their hands in a lot of pockets. It’s not unfeasible that they’d have some way to get Boba detained on trumped up charges, long enough to search him and find legitimate reason to.

A hair faster, a sudden left turn behind a statue of some blank-faced human male built like a speederbus, wearing half a scrapyard and carrying a deece big enough to compensate for other lack.

Boba’s ruck bounces hard off his back. If he can put a minute of distance between them. Just a minute. He can get chest, back, bracer and bucket on in under a minute. Thirty seconds and he can have his blasters. The holdout at his back won’t pierce Zabrak skin.

His breath picks up without his permission. His pace inches up to match. He wings a sudden right. Up three steps to a terraced level and past a scale model of a Kuati BT-7 Thunderclap mid-maneuver.

He’s lost one. He curses his inattention. Did he go to flank? For reinforcements? Neither is good. Concentrate, he needs to concentrate. Remember the map. There’s another tram station at Incorporation Island, _ osik _4 no, can't: Czerka has a branch there and he’s heard they’ll haul people right off the street and into the building and no one ever bothers them about it. Axial North is in the other direction. There’s a taxi stand outside the government buildings, but that’s haggling and time wasted and witnesses.

Boba swings a right.

He collides.

There’s a clatter of voices, a scramble of limbs. Boba clutches at the straps of his ruck; he can’t lose his armor.

“Woah! Where’s the grenade?”

Hands on his shoulder haul him to steady before he loses his feet. Everything is heightened, sensitivity prickles down his skin. He’s counted off a dozen ways to move from contact to leverage, from leverage to advantage. He’s got a knee bent, a heel braced, a hand around the wrist.

His own face smirks back.

“Well hey,” the man, the _clone_ says with a grin that’s too easy for him. “Have we met? I feel like I’ve seen your face around.”

Boba stares.

His heartbeat is rattling hollow against his ribs. He’s lost track of his tail and his brain seems stuck in angles and momentum and timing. Words hit his ears like both hammer blows and sludge. He feels every inch of his holdout against his back.

“Get it? Your face? Because…” the clone trails off and his grin dims.

He looks adult. Boba wonders how old he is, how much younger he is than Boba.

“Hey,” he says and Boba flinches. “Easy, easy. Are you spiraling? Can I help?”

The words don’t make sense.

“You’re on Corellia,” the clone says. “Coronet City, in the tackiest part of the gaudy statue garden. Supposedly a garden. I think even the bugs here are farmed. It’s midday just about, way past time for midmeal according to my stomach. Weather is nice and balmy with a side of soupy air.”

“You’re really bad at this,” Boba mutters and the hands on his shoulders rock him a little in indignation.

“That’s what I get for trying!” the clone grouses. He glares but it’s heatless and showy.

It’s strange. It’s been many years since he’s seen that face on anything but Buir and in mirrors. Once, he’d seen hundreds and thousands of them every day. He hasn’t thought about that in years.

He’s tried not to think about that. Buir loves him, asked for him, raised him, trained him, built him into a legacy. Buir didn’t let anyone change him. Buir _loves him_ and tells him that in word and deed as often as Boba wants. Buir loves him. That Buir doesn’t care for the clones doesn’t change that.

Would a clone have done this better, Boba wonders. Would a clone have gotten in and out of Czerka with a data stick and without an alert?

Boba shouldn’t compare himself to them. Boba is Buir’s son, the clones are just byproducts.

Buir is better than Boba at ignoring inconvenient facts.

“I’m fine,” he says when the clone doesn’t seem inclined to let him go. They can both smell the lie. Boba won’t protest more. Can’t. He remembers that clones have special dialects in both speech and sign. The more he talks, the more likely he’ll be noticed as Not Belonging. So he leaves the truth to hang like a lie in the air. The clone rolls his eyes hard. Practiced hands tuck Boba under one arm and that too is familiar.

They’d called Boba vod once, let him him play and sleep and curl among them. Buir had tolerated it at least while he worked, and only until Boba was old enough to go with him on jobs. Boba doesn’t understand the warmth spreading down his shoulders. Had he missed this?

“I’ve seen some bad liars, vod’ika. Some _really_ bad liars. I’d tell you where you fell on that scale but you look like a biter.” The clone, there’s no better word for it, _harries_ Boba into motion with nudges. A shoulder bump here, a hip-check there, and Boba’s walking alongside before he’s even thought of it. It’s neatly done. Professional. If Boba had been any less observant he’d might have thought it was his own idea to go along.

It isn’t a bad plan, though. Boba doesn’t know where the enforcers went and he can’t make them out from the few glances he’s managed unobtrusively. The park is nigh deserted, save a few people here or there enjoying midmeal in the sunshine.

The clone is tall, thin but built and the gap between the end of his half-sleeves and his gloves show off tightly corded arms. He has a rifle slung cross-body and the neck of his eye-catching light jacket hints at a holster underneath. He wears weapons with the casual ease of everyday and the confidence of experience with them. Even the affront to sight that is the clone’s colorful attire can’t distract from that, and Boba wouldn’t want to mess with him if he could avoid it. Czerka only suspects Boba might have been up to something. It isn’t worth tangling with one of the former GAR soldiers for a maybe.

And besides, there’s never just _one_ clone anywhere. Travel in herds, Buir said once, when he could be convinced to talk about them at all. They have a planet somewhere too. At some point they’ll head to the spaceport, and Boba can slip away.

“So then Chatterbox, you gonna tell me who lost you?”

“What?”

They’re coming up to a fountain and a modest knot of figures lounging in the shadow of it chattering indistinctly. Boba hadn’t even _noticed_ a fountain in the distance and this thing is massive. Heaving buttresses, towering spires, spitting jets that sparkle in the sun. He doesn’t know when the grass and brick under his boots has changed to laid stone tiles, almost painfully white in the light. Focus, he chides himself. Focus. He can’t just blindly follow. He really can’t trust that instinct to do so.

“Chatterbox. On account of how delightfully talkative you are.” The clone doesn’t stop smiling. Hasn’t once, but there’s something calculating in his eyes. “And ‘lost’ because I’m not an idiot, vod’ika. I know you don’t live here.”

He hadn’t known clones lived on Corellia at all. He hadn’t thought about that, or he’d tried not to. He tried not to be curious about them, the millions of brothers he had but didn’t get to keep even one.

“I’m not lost,” he says because he isn’t, but it sounds like a lie anyway. The clone takes it as it sounds.

“Look you’re not in trouble, I promise.” He’s so earnest. He trusts Boba immediately, just because of his face. He wants the same in return, but Boba can’t. He _can’t_. “Whoever took you off Home for whatever adventure, they shouldn’t have left you-”

“Someone _left you!?_ ”

There’s a jetii. There’s a _jetii_ and he’s flinging himself bodily between Boba and the clone. His hands are everywhere except his own self or his saber and everything Boba has ever known about jetiise is they are cold, condescending beings, that they follow orders blindly even til their own deaths, no better than droids. Dogs of the Republic. He’s never suspected they hug.

The jetii hugs him. It isn’t the polite greeting that exists in some cultures. This is a greeting for family. For brothers, because the jetii isn’t any bigger than Boba is. “Who is it and which eye am I gonna blacken?”

“Could you even reach their eye, kid?”

“Don’t call me kid. And you, who left you?”

There’s a clone with an arm on his shoulder and a jetii with arms around his waist as though this is normal. As though it isn’t causing Boba’s mind to trip and stall.

“No one. No one,” he says and he can’t stop sounding like he’s lying. “I came on my own.”

“Banthashit.”

“Caleb, _language_.”

“ _ Osik'la _5 then. Tell me who.”

They fold him between them, a clone and a jetii both dressed as spacers but for their weapons. Spacers, if such were given to pinks and purples and early-dawn-colors. They banter in Basic and Mando’a, in hand signs and the words unsaid and unneeded between old friends. They bully him into the shade, near enough to the fountain spray that the humidity doesn’t sit as heavy. The knot of clones lingering there swallow all three equally easily.

Boba is jealous of himself. He’s jealous of this moment he doesn’t get to have. He’s jealous of the jetii and the brotherhood he takes as his right. He’s jealous of the way the clones don’t mind where their limbs drape or over whom. He’s jealous of the way he’s tipped against a clone as though nothing else could reasonably be expected.

He’s jealous of the way he doesn’t remember Ponds until the clone hugs him.

“I won’t make you tell me,” Ponds says and holds him. It’s just the same as he did when Boba was small, when Ponds would cradle his shoulders and press kisses to his temple and promise him buir would be back for him soon, that he hadn’t changed his mind and wanted no clones at all or worse, had chosen a more capable model.

Ponds shushes Caleb’s protests. The fountain burbles and splashes. Boba’s voice finishes the end of a joke, and his voice groans a laugh at how terrible it is. In Boba’s left thigh pocket, a data stick of Czerka Corporation slave labor factory details thrums dangerous, deadly if it’s caught before Boba can get it back to his Kuat Drive Yards employer.

This is Boba’s first solo hunt. There’s much more at stake here than his petty wants.

“I won’t make you tell me. But Vode look out for each other. If someone isn’t doing that, I need to know so I can correct it.”

Boba seals his lips and shakes his head. He doesn’t know what he would say if he would speak. He knows it won’t be good. Ponds is angry and disappointed and only one of those is at Boba, but he still as good as his word now as he was then. He doesn’t press.

They share food and laughs as easily as touch and insults, and there’s some of each passed to Boba with casual flippancy. They spend the noon that way, slowly toasting in the shade. The warmth chases away the memories of his dash through the labor district.

It’s not for him, these stolen moments. He has to remind himself of that every time the jetii or his brother clone goad him into retorts that could give him away. This isn’t for him, and when he gets the chance he’ll make for the spaceport and leave these all behind.

He doesn’t want to stay, he tells himself. Doesn’t want to keep this. He’s satisfied with what he has. He isn’t so weak as to need more. The lie hangs in the air like the drops from the fountain.

He’s not the little vod’ika that would go to Ponds with nightmares, he says and steals a chance folded inside a moment of inattention.

He is Boba Fett. He’s the _son_ of Jango Fett. He’s better than clones.

He fights every day to maintain the illusion. He prays no one ever looks too hard.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Bounty Hunter. Back  
> 2\. Parent, Father or Mother. Back  
> 3\. Clan Mark. Back  
> 4\. Shit. Back  
> 5\. That's shit. Back  
> 


End file.
